


Love Story (Blah Blah Blah)

by Redring91



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst and Humor, Charles is a Stalker, Charles is a Troll, Erik Has Feelings, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Erik is Crushing Harder than a 12-year Old Girl, Erik is a Stalker, Erik is a Troll, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, Humor, M/M, Song Lyrics, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 22:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3546581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redring91/pseuds/Redring91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Erik and Charles have passive-aggressive conversations using their favourite pop artist’s song lyrics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Story (Blah Blah Blah)

**Author's Note:**

> This is for SomewhereBetweenRageAndSerenity (whose awesome Tumblr account can be found at aromanticmagneto.tumblr.com) and was born out of a conversation we had regarding Erik’s love for Ke$ha and Britney Spears; and Charles’s love for Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus.
> 
> This was originally going to be a small piece. But my love for Erik caused plot to happen.
> 
> -

-

 

“What do you know about me?”

 

“Everything.”

 

Erik’s not entirely sure he believes this – after all, ‘everything’ is an awful lot – and his first reaction is to assume that Charles means ‘everything about Shaw.’ Their following conversation seems to reinforce this. Besides, despite his overtures of friendship, it isn’t as though Charles would have found anything of interest to him about _Erik_ in Erik’s mind anyway.

 

-

 

Erik’s surprised when Charles suddenly starts singing along to the radio as they drive down the highway towards the next set of co-ordinates. He glances over to find Charles is already eyeing him too, as if awaiting a verdict. Erik holds his gaze for a full three seconds just because he can before turning his eyes back onto the road.

 

“I don’t mind Swift,” he offers up neutrally, “though I suspect you already know that.”

 

“Yes, I did.” Charles admits, but his grin is still ecstatic. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am about your taste in music. It will be nice to have someone one _my_ side for once. Raven gives me such a hard time for it.”

 

“I prefer Ke$ha,” Erik reveals before he realises he’s going to.

 

“I know.” Charles smiles warmly at him. “But I’m glad you appreciate Taylor Swift too.” Then he starts singing again.

 

_“All I know is we said ‘hello,’ and your eyes look like coming home_  
_All I know is a simple name, everything has changed_  
 _All I know is you held the door, you'll be mine and I’ll be yours_  
 _All I know since yesterday is everything has changed”_

 

Erik’s fingers curl tightly around the steering wheel. He tries very hard not to think about blue eyes and ‘you’re not alone.’ He especially does not think about ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ and why they make him want to shiver. Instead, he focuses on the sentiment he feels it is safe to agree with.

 

_“All I know is pouring rain and everything has changed.”_

 

-

 

The training regime that day culminated in nothing more than a fight between the kids at the dinner table, which screeches to a halt immediately under Erik’s glare and Charles’s soft disappointment. Erik bails from the room and lets Charles chastise them. His time is far better utilised considering how to improve Charles’s mood so he doesn’t spend the rest of the night frowning sadly.

 

This reminds Erik of a night during their road trip, when Charles’s disappointment at being turned down by a potential recruit had vanished immediately upon catching Erik dancing to Ke$ha on the radio. With this in mind, he turns on the music and begins setting up the chess board. Charles’s timing is perfect.

 

_“Wooaah, there’s a party at a rich dude’s house_

_If you wanna go then you know-oh_

_We’re going fight ‘til we do it right_

_So let’s, wooaah, tonight”_

 

Charles’s lip twitches. Erik gives him the best innocent look he can muster, but he knows it’s too close to the expression he had worn after throwing Sean off the satellite. Still, it has the desired effect because Charles slumps back against the door and starts laughing.

 

-

 

After Cuba, Charles lies in bed with a pillow pressed over his face, projecting betrayal and hurt.

 

_“Who gave up the fight, yeah, wrong or right_  
_Well you know my heart is aching, you don’t have to break it_  
 _If love don’t change your mind, then there’s two more lonely people”_

 

There’s a knot in his chest and he can’t feel his legs.

 

-

 

After Cuba, Erik stands in the ruins of an abandoned train station, the surrounding metal warped and twisted with his self-loathing.

 

_“You better run, run, run, run, run, ‘cause there’s gonna be some hell to pay_

_You better run, run, run, run, run, and that’s the only thing I’m going to say”_

 

There’s a burn in his throat and the helmet is a heavier weight than it should be.

 

-

 

Things have been strained between the two of them whenever their paths cross. But it comes to a head during a hostage situation, when Erik kidnaps a political activist so Emma can get information out of him about his anti-mutant policies. The CIA ask Charles to intervene, and the fact that Charles has agreed to work with them again angers Erik more than Charles’s actual opposition. It doesn’t take long before they’re both shouting at each other over the communications system, ignoring the discomfort of the X-Men and the Brotherhood alike. Then Erik gets so frustrated that he fiddles with the control settings and blasts a song down the line to drown Charles out.

 

_“Hush, just stop, there’s nothing you can do or say,_

_Baby, I’ve had enough”_

 

The song itself is mostly an accident.

 

_“‘Cause now I’m stronger than yesterday_  
_Now it’s nothing but my way_  
 _My loneliness ain’t killing me no more_  
 _I’m stronger”_

 

Setting the song on repeat before Azazel transports them away, though, is definitely not an accident.

 

-

 

It’s about a fortnight later when Erik realises that Charles isn’t going to let the incident slide.

 

Exhausted from their mission, everyone slumps around the room. The satisfaction of their victory at the government’s secret research facility doesn’t detract from the fact that they’re all coated in mud from the storm they had gotten caught in. Mystique tiredly suggests a hose, or at least a bucket, as Janos wipes at the mess on his shirt. Erik absentmindedly tugs his helmet off as he silently mourns the state of his cape.

 

The moment it leaves his head, he hears music.

 

_“Saying, ‘This is it, I've had enough,’ ‘cause like  
We hadn't seen each other in a month”_

 

He jumps with surprise, dropping his helmet, and then he groans. The others all look at him in concern as he digs his fingers into his temple. Emma stares in astonishment and then starts laughing helplessly.

 

_“We are never ever ever getting back together_  
_We are never ever ever getting back together_  
 _You go talk to your friends, talk to my friends, talk to me_  
 _But we are never ever ever ever getting back together”_

 

Does it have to be so loud? He thinks irritably, which is a mistake, because the music only grows even louder.

 

Erik tolerates the concert in his head for a generous fifteen minutes before he cleans his helmet and rams it back on.

 

-

 

The next raid they need to make becomes problematic because they discover the X-Men are going to be in the vicinity of the building they need to infiltrate. They’re at a loss and almost at the point where they’ll be forced to abort when Erik has very bad good idea. While his team go after the information they need, Erik not so subtly hijacks an anti-government demonstration on the other side of town.

 

_“All the eyes on me in the centre of the ring, just like a circus”_

 

As expected, playing Britney Spears over the tannoys gets Charles’s complete attention and the X-Men arrive to stop whatever chaos he’s planning.

 

_“There’s only two types of guys out there_  
_Ones that can hang with me, and ones that are scared_  
 _So, baby, I hope that you came prepared”_

 

By the time Charles manages to work out that Erik is distracting them – after the song has looped twice and his speech about mutant superiority is beginning to grow repetitive – his team have already completed the raid and escaped. He doesn’t bother hiding his smug grin.

 

-

 

Erik makes sure he keeps the helmet on this time. It takes one whole day before Charles finds a way around this problem.

 

Everyone on his team abruptly begins to serenade him, in chorus, complete with dance routines. The only one unaffected is Emma, who had been in her diamond form when it started. She is refraining from making any comments, but the amusement on her face says enough.

 

_“I knew you were trouble when you walked in_  
_So shame on me now_  
 _Flew me to places I'd never been_  
 _‘Til you put me down, oh_  
 _I knew you were trouble when you walked in_  
 _So shame on me now_  
 _Flew me to places I'd never been_  
 _Now I'm lying on the cold hard ground”_

 

He refuses to think about bright sand on a beach, but guilt sharpens his tone with anger anyway. “Don’t you have better things to do with Cerebro?” He aims his demand at Angel, who’s currently the closest to him. His only response is further singing.

 

_“You're drowning, you're drowning, you're drowning.”_

 

He struggles not to give any reaction to this, just in case Charles can see him in their minds. He’d rather be taunted about Cuba than Miami.

 

The serenade continues for half an hour before Charles withdraws. The only mention any of them gives the incident is a muttered complaint from Mystique that she’ll never be able to forget the words now and she doesn’t even like Swift.

 

-

 

Charles pours tea for Emma as she delicately selects a biscuit, and he tries to keep the scepticism out of his voice. “You came here to warn me about an attempted kidnapping.”

 

She inspects her diamond nails disinterestedly. “Yes, sugar. We all thought you’d take the news best from me.” She nudges the folder she’d set on the table. “All the information we gathered is in here.”

 

“And I’m supposed to assume in good faith that this isn’t some sort of a trap your team has concocted?”

 

Emma tuts reproachfully. “I thought you preferred to see the good in people.” She takes a sip of her tea, eyeing him thoughtfully. “Very well then.” She shimmers, reverting back into her own flesh. _See for yourself,_ she projects.

 

Charles reads the truth of her claim immediately in her surface thoughts. But when he probes beyond it, he is met with a memory of singing.

 

_“They say that true love hurts, well this could almost kill me_  
_Young love murder, that is what this must be_  
 _I would give it all to not be sleeping alone, alone_  
 _The life is fading from me while you watch my heart bleed_  
 _Young love murder, that is what this must be_  
 _I would give it all to not be sleeping alone, alone”_

 

He jerks out of her thoughts as she almost simultaneously shifts back into her diamond form. It was clear she had put the memory there on purpose.

 

“It’s our esteemed leader’s week to pick the music.” Emma says breezily. “This discovery of ours put him in a bit of a mood.”

 

Charles says nothing.

 

Emma sets down her cup and gets to her feet. “Thank you for the tea. Mystique sends you her love, but also said to remind you that the problem isn’t go to go away even if you continue to ignore it.”

 

-

 

Charles deals with the kidnapping threat, making sure the ones responsible forget they even wanted to kidnap him. But he ignores the _other_ problem, if only because the latest song was not what he had expected to hear. Nor was it want he wanted to hear. He wants to stay angry with Erik. So he stays silent, refusing to acknowledge that it was technically his turn to respond. Then he ignores an assassination and a sentence of life imprisonment.

 

He keeps his silence for ten years.

 

-

 

Peter gets bored with the stony silence in the car almost immediately and flips the radio on. Erik cannot be held responsible for what comes out of the speakers.

 

_“My loneliness is killing me_  
_I must confess, I still believe_  
 _When I'm not with you I lose my mind_  
 _Give me a sign_  
 _Hit me baby one more time”_

 

Peter and Logan both snort. Hank shifts uncomfortably. Erik can feel Charles’s glare on him but he keeps his own gaze fixed on the dashboard in front of him. He does, however, brush his thumb against his jaw, where Charles had struck him.

 

-

 

A few weeks after Washington, Erik decides he’s entitled to feel irked. The Sentinel issue aside, he deserves some form of acknowledgement from _someone_ that perhaps leaving him to rot for years in prison had been unjustified. Particularly for something he had actually been trying to prevent, which _someone_ could have worked out for himself if he had been using his powers.

 

Then he discovers that Trask was part of the same anti-mutant conspiracy that he had been hunting before he’d been arrested. And he decides that he’s allowed to be petty for being slighted and ignored all that time.

 

-

 

They’ve only been in the foyer for a few seconds before it happens again. Thankfully the woman at the desk doesn’t seem to notice that her radio has re-tuned itself to a different signal.

 

_“What you’ve got boy is hard to find_

_I think about it all the time_

_I’m all strung out, my heart is fried_

_I just can't get you off my mind!  
Because your love, your love, your love is my drug”_

 

Hank twitches nervously, but bares his teeth in a growl. “Can’t you _make_ him stop?” While Hank has clearly been trying to ignore it, this is the twenty third consecutive radio in their vicinity that has abruptly started playing Ke$ha. Charles thinks of the helmet in his study and wonders if Erik expects him to attempt this solution.

 

The volume slides up ever so slightly. Hank grumbles under his breath about identifying the bandwidth of the broadcast and blocking the signal from all the devices within a twenty foot radius.

 

_“Hey, so I got a question_  
_Do you wanna have a slumber party in my basement?_  
 _Do I make your heart beat like an 808 drum_  
 _Is my love your drug?_

_Your drug? Ha, your drug? Ha, your drug?_

_Is my love your drug?”_

 

Charles directs the receptionist’s attention elsewhere before wheeling over to the radio and pulling it out of the wall. He can sense Erik’s mind nearby and pushes a light sensation of discontent in his direction. _That’s enough._

 

The impression he gets back is _prison_ and _serum_ and _TEN YEARS,_ bundled up in the mental equivalent of a cold shoulder.

 

-

 

It takes three weeks for Erik to get a proper response to the radio-stalking. It takes the form of random people suddenly singing in his direction as he passes them in the street.

 

_“I got two, ooh, ooh letters for you_  
_One of them’s F and the other one’s U_  
 _‘Cause what you gotta do, is go get yourself a clue”_

 

He glares and hopes the intensity of it carries across Cerebro.

 

_“Don't even try to act like Mr Super Nonchalant  
What makes you think I'll stick around”_

 

Something remarkably like ice makes itself known in his chest. He snarls around it. Stick around SINCE WHEN, Mr We-don’t-want-the-same-thing-and-you-can-rot-in-prison-for-ten-years?!

 

_“I got a lot of nasty things flowing up in my head_  
_But none of them are worth my time_  
 _You're not even worth this rhyme”_

 

“Fine.” He snaps. “Consider the radios silenced.” He stalks away and hopes that Cerebro didn’t convey the tremor in his voice. He makes a mental note to destroy a national monument, willing to trade the satisfaction of doing so for the annoyance that will follow with the government’s lackeys afterwards.

 

-

 

It takes him seventy six hours to shake the federal agents who had tried to recapture him. He should have just killed them in the first place, but he’s satisfied with the message he’s sent them by escaping: they don’t know how to track him without a trail of bodies in his wake.

 

The moment he reaches one of his safe houses he knows that someone else has been there, and he knows exactly who that someone is. She’s the only one who knows about this place. He enters cautiously, calculating the odds on whether she’s going to shoot him again.

 

But she’s not there. What he finds instead is a package. Attached to the outside are a tape recorder and a note. He pulls the tape free first.

 

_“I’m on the battlefield, like, oh my God, ooh la la  
Knocking soldiers down like house of cards, ooh la la_

_I’m a one woman army, ooh la la_

_Yes I’m a one woman army, ooh la la, ooh la la, ooh la la”_

 

Erik laughs despite himself. It may not be forgiveness, but it’s an acknowledgement, understanding, and he appreciates it more than he thought he would. He’s still grinning when he reaches for her note.

 

‘This is the material that didn’t make the front page,’ Mystique has written. ‘Consider this a gesture on my part for those ten years.” He pauses, surprised by this concession. ‘There are two copies of everything. You should probably send one to him.’ He pulls a face. ‘I heard about the radios. I’m impressed.’

 

Erik mulls this over as he opens the package.

 

-

 

Charles didn’t know what he had expected when he opened the package, but it certainly wasn’t copies of documentation from Trask industries. Raven – Mystique – must have returned to infiltrate the corporation before the government had moved in to shut it down. But what would she have needed with –

 

He stops, pulls the report that had caught his eye closer towards him. It’s correspondence from Trask requesting to be given custody of a federal prisoner.

 

Charles swallows. The Sentinels had been constructed with _no metal_ on them. Trask had known about Erik. He spreads the documents out across the table before reaching for the tape recorder that had also been enclosed. When the music starts he realises that while the package had been put together by Raven, she’s not the one who has sent it to him.

 

_“I know it’s been a while_  
_But I’m glad you came_  
 _And I’ve been thinking ‘bout_  
 _How you say my name”_

 

The volume is on the lowest setting. Charles glances back at the documents in front of him; the blueprints for cages made of plastic and concrete, designs of surgical equipment to be made out of ceramics and stone, reports on electrotherapy…and gas chambers. The detail of preparation in this makes Charles feel sick.

 

_“Let me break the ice_  
_Allow me to get you right_  
 _Let you warm up to me”_

 

There’s an addendum on Trask’s latest transfer request – dated a month before Washington – suggesting The Prisoner be used in the demonstration of the prototypes. There’s also a transcript for a non-disclosure meeting regarding Trask’s sentence, indicating that government officials found it convenient that Magneto had escaped from prison shortly after Trask’s Sentinel program had been shut down by the board.

 

He wonders how Erik had gotten out of the Pentagon in Logan’s time. Charles hadn’t cared to ask. That thought make him want a drink. Instead, he looks at the tape recorder.

 

-

 

The return of the tape recorder fills Erik with so much dread that he cannot bring himself to touch it for three days. Finally, he imagines the look Mystique would give him if she knew, the subsequent ‘you two are such children’ speech that would follow, and it’s enough to make him yield.

 

_“The 7 things I hate about you”_

 

Well, he thinks, his heart sinking. That’s not encouraging.

  
_“You make me laugh, you make me cry_  
_I don't know which side to buy_  
 _Your friends they're jerks_  
 _And when you act like them, just know it hurts_  
 _I wanna be with the one I know”_

Erik blinks. Wait, what?

  
_“And the 7 th thing I hate the most that you do_  
 _You make me love you”_

 

Oh. Erik thinks. _Oh._ He smiles. He can cope with that.

 

-

**Author's Note:**

> -
> 
> When Trask gives his speech to Nixon about Magneto’s abilities, he did it so casually that I wondered what information he had on Erik and why. I put some of my conclusions in here. (I also maybe wanted Charles to feel a little bad about ignoring Erik.)
> 
> Songs mentioned (in order of appearance):  
> “Love Story” – Taylor Swift / “Blah Blah Blah” – Ke$ha  
> “Everything Has Changed” – Taylor Swift  
> “Party At A Rich Dude’s House” – Ke$ha  
> “Two More Lonely People” – Miley Cyrus  
> “Run Devil Run” – Ke$ha  
> “Stronger” – Britney Spears  
> “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” – Taylor Swift  
> “Circus” – Britney Spears  
> “I Knew You Were Trouble” – Taylor Swift  
> “The Harold Song” – Ke$ha  
> “Baby One More Time” – Britney Spears  
> “Your Love Is My Drug” – Ke$ha  
> “FU” – Miley Cyrus  
> “Battlefield” – Porcelain Black  
> “Break The Ice” – Britney Spears  
> “7 Things” – Miley Cyrus
> 
> -


End file.
